Not less than $150,000. With
lost income, it would easily approach
$400,000 upwards of $100,000 easily. Between $172,799 to roughly $191,000, of
which I still owe 120,929. Getting divorced in the US isn't
cheap. In 2021, there were roughly 2 million marriages and
nearly 700,000 divorces. That's a lot of people coughing up a
lot of dough. It's been four years of misery
and very expensive four years of misery. While divorces are expensive, how
expensive depends on where you live. If you have children, if
you own property, if there's anything you and your spouse
disagree on, and several other factors. The more complex it is, the more
hours that are required hours by the lawyers, hours by the
appraisers, the business valuators, the crypto hunters,
the forensics, the forensic accountants, the forensic
psychologist. According to Elizabeth Douglas, founding
attorney and CEO of Douglas Family Law Group in New York, an
uncontested divorce costs between $1500 and $5500 pn
average and a contested divorce anywhere from $40,000 to
$140,000. If the case goes to trial, even more. This is Lindsay Williams, John
Norman and Zoe Hutzler. Three people who have gone through at
least one divorce. They cost various amounts but for all
significantly affected their financial circumstances. Let's
start with Lindsay who got divorced twice. Both were
uncontested with no children involved. An uncontested divorce
is what it sounds like: uncontested and it's typically a
lot cheaper. A contested divorce is when the couple can't come to
an agreement. Lindsay went the cheapest route possible, DIY. You should pay someone to help
you get divorced. You don't have to do it a couple of times. But
there are also certain counties that have Do It Yourself
programs where you can go online and you can fill out the forms
yourself. Lindsay's first divorce in 1997 cost $1,000.
Their second in 2006 was $4,000. But after Lindsay's first
husband passed, they had to pay their ex husband's debt. Did you
consult a lawyer to make sure that was legally solid? I didn't because I was poor. I
grew up poor and the idea of consulting a lawyer for anything
was so outside of my financial, you know, scope of
understanding. No matter what contested or not, fees can't be
escaped. Court fees differ by state but in New York, even for
an uncontested divorce, filing fees will cost you at least
$335. That's not including the cost of a lawyer, photocopies,
notary fees, transportation, mailing and processor fees,
among others. There are software you have to
buy if you want to use things to support your case like text
messages and emails, I paid a transcriber $250 for a court
transcription. That gets expensive. Then there are contested divorces,
which means more conflict and more conflict means more money.
Court filing fees, process servers or
Real Property Appraiser. Typically there is a forensic
psychologist who has a custody issue, business valuator
nowadays, so many people have cryptocurrency so a crypto
hunter a tax specialist. Douglas says one of the most expensive
parts of a contested divorce is discovery, the formal process of
exchanging information between the parties - that can take
months and even years. Most prices get driven up when
we're dealing with people who have offshore accounts, or
they're trying to hide assets or transfers. That's where you
start seeing things like funneling money into an aunt's
name a sister's name. The more topics that need to be
discussed, assets split, money trying to maintain essentially
two households, on our same found, children that need to be
planned for, all means more hours, you're paying your lawyer
for. Since John first separated from his ex wife in 2019 he's
used several ranging from $250 to $650 an hour. A divorce is a
separation, a dissolution a disassociation. And with that
comes a lot of life changes - significant ones. We're incomes, two houses, two electricity
bills, cable, internet, groceries, cars, rent or
mortgage. And that's if you're lucky, Lindsay was in an abusive
relationship. It was not safe to stay in the
house, but I didn't have anywhere to go. So that's when I
learned how to live in a car. There's also the cost of moving,
buying new furniture, setting up utilities, doing your taxes
independently, separating your health insurance and possibly
selling the shared home or homes. And that's just the
beginning. This major life change might cause time lost at
work, the need for therapy, and if there are children involved,
more child care. And speaking of children, there's custody to
figure out. John worked in law enforcement for more than 20
years and he was retired in 2019. When he separated from his
ex wife, we went through a completely
unnecessary custody battle. It was about $123,000 in attorneys
fees, I had to hire an expert witness. I was without my kids
for a year. Before the divorce, he says
money wasn't a concern. Now, he owes more than $120,000, nearly
$40,000 of that in credit card debt. We had extra money and bought a
boat then there was this custody battle and it just drained all
my accounts. It's gonna take me years to recoup from that. He says he retired in 2016, and
became the primary caretaker to his then seven and 10 year old
daughters. That's while his ex wife started her own business.
So when he and his ex wife split, all he had coming in was
a pension - $3,200 a month I was paying for groceries on
our joint checking account, then that joint checking account was
emptied to an account that my name wasn't on. So I was left
with $38. And it was a difficult spot to be in. He worked in real estate, got a
part time job at Ithaca College, and he recently accepted a new
job with Tennessee Homeland Security as a special field
agent. How are you gonna get out of all this debt? Working a lot, you know, living
a more frugal lifestyle, I'm gonna devote probably the vast
majority of my pension to paying down debt. I'm working with a
financial analyst as well, who is helping with that, and that's
yes, by the way, that's another expense, another $5,000 to come
into a plan on how to pay down your debt, but it's a drop in
the bucket if I can effectively erase $120,000 of debt in the
next three to four years. It's gonna be money well spent. Ken couch is a professor at the
University of Connecticut studying the economic effects of
unexpected lifecycle events. In a long term study developed in
collaboration with the Social Security Administration, he
found that divorced women lost significant financial security
unless they remarried. The flows of child support and
alimony do not make up for the additional living costs on
average. In the divorced woman's household typically, the
household of the woman and children suffer a significant
decline in their standard of living where the typical male
even after paying the child support is doing a little bit
better than he was married. He's not the only one to discuss what
many around the world call the divorce gap. This study for one
on British households by a professor at the London School
of Economics claims fathers see an income boost of about 25%
After getting divorced on average, while mothers
experience a 20% drop. It's important to remember that women
earn 82 cents for every dollar a man earns. However, something
that we all know has changed in recent decades is who makes more
money. It's much more common now for women to be the breadwinner.
And of course, not all divorces involve a man and a woman. Well,
studies do show that in the long term, women end up with a
decline in their standard of living higher earners do
experience substantial financial loss, at least during the
divorce. If you're the monied spouse, you're
probably going to pay more because you're contributing a
portion towards the other spouse's council fees. Likely
you are trying to maintain the status quo. So you're probably
paying child support, you're probably paying maintenance all
while trying to maintain a home or a new lifestyle of your own. So how can Americans reduce
their costs? Fight less, agree more. Take the
emotion to the extent you can out of it. Even when you have
lots of assets to protect when you are fighting about
everything where everything has to be your way or the highway,
it's going to cost you more. To prevent her divorce from
being a huge financial burden on both her and her ex husband, Zoe
Hutzler, who has a seven year old son worked with a friend of
hers who was an attorney to craft a custody agreement. We didn't have a humongous
estate, the tough part for us was custody. I thought that
would really reduce the amount of time we would spend with our
lawyers. Unfortunately, my ex husband didn't think so. Like
John's, Zoe's divorce started with
mediation, but they were going nowhere and got lawyers in 2022.
She says one argument alone about picking up and dropping
off her son cost her $4,000. I mean, I literally would text him
on the side and say, Do you realize how much this fight is
costing us? This is ridiculous. Can't we be adults can't we just
have this conversation? But when somebody else engages their
lawyer, you have no choice but then to engage back with your
lawyer. The money I've spent on things
that have vaporized and never come to fruition. We spent three
weeks in negotiations, spending money on our attorneys to
negotiate the duration of gymnastics and how it would
unfold and who would be taking and then the kid doesn't want to
do gymnastics. While it might be easier said
than done, there are steps Americans can take to keep costs
down. Get yourself organized. Gather all the documents you
might need like tax returns, employment contracts and real
estate documents. Know your state laws and especially know
your rights. The more work you do up front, the less time
you'll be paying someone else to do it for you, and choose your
mediator or lawyer wisely. You get what you pay for. The
cheapest, cheapest, cheapest way is do it yourself or, you know,
you see those signs all the time, a divorce $399. It's like
getting a happy meal right as opposed to the real deal. But if
you do that, then you have to be prepared to deal with those
results, which might be waiting longer, getting papers bounced
back and getting it done wrong. At the same time. Spend your time
with your lawyer wisely. Your divorce lawyer should not be
your best friend, also the most expensive friend you can have.
Keep the explaining complaining and
venting for your trusted loved ones. And not someone with a
several hundred dollar hourly rate. A therapist might be a
good idea too, and certainly a cheaper one. There are also
options for those who don't have enough money to get divorced -
law firms that do pro bono work, offer financial assistance, and
there are many organizations, nonprofits and shelters that can help too. You don't
have to stay married to someone just because you don't have the
money. And finally, for those who aren't in this
situation quite yet, consider a prenup. The best piece of advice I can give
anybody is you are never going to negotiate a more favorable
divorce for both parties than when you love each other. Prenups are romantic. You get to
protect someone while you still love them before you hate them.
And you get to divide and save money for both of you early on.
I think there's some people who stay married because they're
afraid that their lifestyle won't be able to be maintained.
Or they still believe that old adage it's cheaper to keep her.
I say no it's not. It's not cheaper because you can't get
that cost back
